Category Archives: ALL (Association of Language Learning)

Winners of the Primary Language Awards 2013 will be given a range of gifts from a variety of these suppliers depending on their need for their classrooms.
The suppliers have kindly donated the following:

I hope to meet you all soon at the Language Information Pointwhere you can ask questions of head teachers, teachers, LA advisers and other professionals who are helping to support and deliver language support and learning into your schools curriculum in readiness for the 2014 changes.

Just Have a Question?
Then come and ask us; we will talk through the problem or concern with you and suggest a possible solution.

Need a Language Resource?
For those of you who would like to ask a supplier a direct question, some of the sponsors of the Primary Language Awards will be available to answer your questions. They will also show how their resource can support language learning, whilst giving up to date and practical examples of classroom use.

Thursday

10.30 Ann Swarbrick President ALL The new languages curriculum – What subject associations can do for you at a time of curriculum reform

12.00 Priscilla Hannaford Brilliant Books Food, Glorious Food. Food is a great MFL topic, as it has universal appeal. Come learn some great ways of getting children to take ownership of foreign language learning and create their own (food related) sentences.

1.30 Back by popular request. Hilary Powers – Headteacher and Paul Hutton LA Officer Luton. ICT to support language learning Developing language skills in all children.

Friday 11.00 2012 PLCAwards winner – French Jackie Rayment On Track!

An innovative project which has fostered working relationships across the MFL and PE departments. All very appropriate at a time when the London Olympics were uppermost in pupils’ thoughts! But this resource has a shelf life way beyond the Games. A collection of ideas and activities to integrate French and PE activities at all key stages.

This workshop will show:
• how languages can be taught through sport and related activities.
• how to bridge the gap between KS2 & KS3 ( transition)
• how to re-engage hard to reach pupils.
• how to raise standards.
• how to improve uptake at Key Stage 4
how to include SMSC
A workshop full of inspiring resources and techniques to make learning more active! Some of the differentiated and Going for Gold activities are more suitable for more able students at key stage 3 and even KS4 & 5

2.00 Primary Language Awards Ceremony Come and celebrate with the winners and listen to our guest speakers. Winners for French, German, EAL, Welsh and Other including sign language

Saturday10.30 John Foxwell Welcoming Non English Speaking learners into the Classroom A practical session understanding how EAL learners need bilingual resources and text in their first days to help them understand their new surroundings

1.30 Enlli Thomas Senior Lecturer, Bangor
Making the most of bilingualism in the classroom. Raising awareness of bilingual development, bilingual teaching strategies, and use of norm-referenced assessments with bilinguals.

Liz Foxwell, director of the Primary Language Classroom Awards, shares her thoughts on the importance of recognising and celebrating best practice in language teaching.

I believe it’s important to reward all best practice as this raises self-esteem, makes the learner more likely to try out something new, and encourages them not to worry if they get it wrong, but to practice to get it right.

With regard to language learning, this is a great asset and important to the development of the learner’s linguistic knowledge and understanding. By ensuring we use the same terminology for grammatical terms, spelling, language terms and skills, this can support consistency across languages. This consistency also affords us the opportunity to build on prior knowledge in another language and reinforce key concepts.

Pupils having knowledge of more than one language makes them aware of other people and their differences. It can also contribute significantly across…

I saw this and thought it is a little old news but one of our sponsors is Manic Monkey and one of the speakers at the Language Information point is Hilary with her Luton Education Officer Paul and the story is still similar except that now a few years on with support from a range of packages Tennyson Road were this year given an EAL awards for their support of their EAL pupils in the school by EMASUK and also had level 4 SATs results for all children in Year 6…what an achievement.

This year Little Bridge (Manic Monkey) will be sponsoring a relevant language software solution for five of the categories. EMASUK will be offering 6months of membership to their language resources. ALL will also be offering membership whilst Brilliant Publications will be offering selection of Welsh Books. Hobbycraft will be supporting one category with a voucher to get teaching resources to support language development and BESA will be providing a huge box of resources again to support language teaching. The French Embassy and The Goethe Institute will be supporting their respective languages and finally Little Linguist will be offering range of resources to one of the categories. All in all over £500 of resources per category and over £2500 in language support resources overall.

Brilliant Marketing will be ringing all of our successful shortlist in the next few days and inviting them to find out if they have won at the Education Show 15th March 2013. Everyone is welcome to attend at the BESA stand.

The Education Show must also be thanked for sponsoring the space which we will inhabit for the Language Information Point (LIP) at the Education show and Mango Marketing for supporting all of our marketing of the awards and the Language Information Point and the SSAT for also marketing the awards and supporting the LIP.

Everyone involved with the Primary Languages Awards hopes that perhaps a story similar to this one from Hilary in 2008 will mean improved success for the school and pupils in the future.

The Issues

When I began my post at Tennyson Road Primary school, three years ago, one of my main priorities was that of EAL teaching, especially as 13.2% of pupils did not have English as their first language.

As Luton is an airport town, it has a high number of families who have moved to England from abroad; over the years this has been steadily increasing and is reflected in the number of EAL pupils at school. By 2008, 22.2% of pupils at Tennyson Road Primary did not speak English as their first language, 2.6% higher than the national average.

With such a wide range of cultures at the school, from Afro-Caribbean to Romanian, Portuguese to Bangladeshi, it is important to find resources that suit the needs of the pupils, helping them develop their English skills so that they can access the curriculum and ultimately progress with their education. When investigating potential EAL resources, the richest source of knowledge and advice may come from other schools in a similar situation. However, often EAL subject leaders do not have the spare time to discuss effective resources with other schools. Similarly, trying to discover the best EAL resources through trial and error methods can be costly and it could be easy to waste valuable money testing different resources.

How we support our EAL pupils

Tennyson Road Primary is very lucky in that we receive a lot of support from our local authority. As the headteacher, I worked with my local authority School Improvement Advisor (SIA) who gave me advice on how to provide support for EAL pupils. As a result, the SIA offered training for teachers and teaching assistants, recommended resources from their resource library and worked with me to implement a New Arrivals Policy.

The EAL pupils are encouraged to work with the teaching assistant that comes in to school for two mornings per week, these half hourly sessions take place out of class. On some occasions we use a scheme called Talking Partners – a method that the local authority introduced to the school to target pupils that require focused attention. One teaching assistant works with a group of three pupils – for twenty minutes, three times a week – to improve the pupils’ competence with speaking and listening. Working in small groups also means that the teaching assistant can provide focused attention and understand the needs of individual pupils, what they are doing well at and what needs more work. When the children are not with the teaching assistant they are fully integrated in to the class, this may sound daunting for you and me but at that age pupils pick up and understand basic English very quickly. It is also vital that the pupils are not seen as separate or different from the rest of the class to help them fit in and feel comfortable – factors that impact success at school.

At Tennyson Road Primary we have also set up a ‘New Arrivals Policy’, a set of guidelines created for the effective handling of new arrivals. This is managed by the school’s family worker liaising with the class teachers. New pupils are interviewed, along with their parents to find out about the child, their culture and how they cope with transition. Knowing as much as possible about the child allows the teacher to ensure that integration in to the class is as smooth as possible. Talking to the parents of EAL pupils however, is another hurdle that must be managed effectively. As a result quite a proportion of the funding provided by the local authority must be spent on translation to parents.

In addition to the support that can be achieved through the local authority, there are also resources that schools can separately purchase if their budget permits. After speaking at the BESA Summer conference 2008 about EAL funding, Manic Monkey sent me a piece of software called Little Bridge designed with primary EAL pupils in mind. It is used with the children by the teaching assistants in the out-of-class sessions although it is equally effective in a whole class situation. Little Bridge is an interactive 3D resource where English grammatical topics and vocabulary are covered through meeting the characters of Little Bridge, an authentic English village, and learning about their daily routines, hobbies and special celebrations. We’ve found that the children progress quickly using the resource and love the adventure games and songs. One of our Chinese pupils even taught her little sister the Little Bridge song at home.

Pupil Progress

It is vital that teachers are aware of how all pupils are progressing; formal assessment is available for English speaking pupils yet there is no way of formally assessing EAL pupils in terms of how their language skills and understanding is developing. Without assessing this, pupils could slip behind in class or perhaps not be stretched to their full capacity. Tennyson Road Primary has benefited from an assessment programme developed by Luton Borough Council: Language Development for Bilingual Pupils. The programme assesses listening, speaking, reading and writing skills by categorising progress in terms of six stages: from beginner to fluent. The programme is particularly useful for teachers throughout the school as the criterion at each stage offers a standardised format. In addition to this we also make use of the online Learning Management system available through Little Bridge which allows the teachers to store and track pupil progress. The scoring system on Little Bridge is both formative and summative meaning that teachers can clearly see how a child is achieving, a useful tool to ensure pupils are given additional help in the areas in which they need it.

As headteacher of a school that has a high number of EAL pupils, I am aware of the need for good quality resources to help non-English speaking pupils develop their language and listening skills in order to be successful at school. By liaising with our local authority and using engaging software packages, Tennyson Road Primary has been successful at implementing strategies to help these children cope in a foreign school.

Well Done Hilary and please come and talk to Hilary and Paul at the Language Information Point on Thursday at 1.00.